Orzibel stretched out on the couch and used one hand to pull his aloha silk shirt higher up his rib cage, the other drawing a dark-haired head closer to his body. “That’s right, baby. All the way down. STOP FUCKING GAGGING! You wanna make money you gotta learn to—”
The cell phone buzzed from the glass table beside Orzibel. He snatched it up, checked the number and put the phone to his ear. “Things OK down there, Chaku? The food get deliv—” Orzibel scowled and pushed the girl roughly away, his thumb yanking toward the door. “Beat it, puta. School’s out for now.”
He put the phone back to his ear, his voice a tense whisper. “I’ll be right there. Keep looking.”
Orzibel jammed his shirt into his pants, zipped up and ran to the basement, where Chaku waited with three Hispanic men in low-slung pants and bandana-wrapped heads.
“The Rosales girl is gone, Orlando,” Chaku said quietly. “Vanished. We have searched the whole of the basement. Every crack.”
“What? HOW?”
“Jaime and Pablo brought food and water through the tunnel last night. It’s possible she concealed herself until no one could see her escape.”
“What of the watchman in the warehouse?”
“He saw nothing. Neither did Jaime and Pablo.”
“Mierde!” Orzibel’s fist slammed the door. “The girl will call her mama when she gets a chance, all they ever want to do is call mama. I will contact Miguel in Honduras. When Leala calls, Mama will tell Leala to get her tight little ass back here or Mama’s heart goes the way her eye did.”
“Eye?” Chaku grunted.
Orzibel mimed plucking out his eye. “I will amend the threat to include death if we do not see Leala Rosales soon.” Orzibel pulled his phone, paused. “Wait, Chaku … you have a photograph of the girl?”
Morales pulled a 3 x 5 picture from the pocket of a black velvet workout suit, a head and shoulder shot of Leala Rosales taken, as was the custom, of every piece of imported product, the photos typically used in the marketing aspect of the enterprise, giving potential employers a chance to study the goods.
“Put copies in the hands of our people,” Orzibel said. “And others whose eyes can see without tongues wagging. Say that good information will receive both my gratitude and a thousand-dollar gift. Also make it known that anyone helping this bitch will feel my steel in their bellies.”
Chaku edged close. “Rosales will be somewhere in Little Havana or very close, Orlando. She will feel safer near her heritage.”
“A good thought. I will handle Mama, you cast the net in the community.”
The huge man cleared his throat. “You will now go upstairs and tell Amili Zelaya of the trouble, Orlando?”
Orzibel’s eyes tightened into slits. “It falls on me to shovel the dung like I have always done. I will have Leala Rosales back very soon, and no one need know.”
“What will you do when Rosales is returned, Orlando?”
“I will fix the problem permanently, Chaku,” Orzibel said, nodding to himself as if a decision had been made. “And make big money at the same time.”
Miguel Tolandoro’s silver Toyota pickup led a plume of brown dust into the rural village. He was eating a piece of fried chicken and scattering chickens from the road as he wove down a street of brown dirt. Exiting the truck he tossed the bone at a pack of skinny dogs, setting off a fight. He tucked his shirttails into his pants, his voluminous belly making it a job of feel, not sight.
Tolandoro’s pointed boots clicked down the cobbled alley as he passed a large four-paned window looking into a simple kitchen, three panes of glass broken out and replaced with tin and wood scraps. The next address was the one he sought, the Rosales household. It seemed the timid little Leala Rosales was proving a handful in the States, but he’d soon make the proper adjustments in the situation.
Tolandoro’s rough knuckles pounded the sun-bleached wooden door and he spoke the words memorized on the drive. “Señora Rosales … I bring word from Leala, who is living an excellent life in America and working hard for you. She wishes you to have a gift from her labor and to call her on my telephone. May I enter your fine home?”
Nothing. Tolandoro tried again, louder. A face at the neighboring hovel peered out the remaining glass window, then disappeared. Seconds later the door opened and a wizened woman looked out, her eyes filled with anger.
“She is gone. Go away. Stop your noise.”
“Where is she, old one?”
“You took her daughter, did you not?”
Tolandoro puffed out his chest and his chin. “Leala Rosales wanted to earn her fortune. It is my business to make the beautiful dreams come true. Where is the mother?”
“You are a pimp,” the old woman hissed.
Tolandoro’s jaw clenched and his eyes slitted. “Where is the mother, old woman? Tell me before I—”
“She has left for unknown places. She knows her daughter is gone forever. Stolen by a liar and procurer.”
“Do not address me like that!”
The door slammed but the old woman continued to yell. “Filth! Pimp! Stealer of babies!”
Miguel Tolandoro started away, but halted after three steps to snatch a rock from the gutter. He turned and smashed it through the last window, which would now need covering to keep out the flies.
“Live in the dark, crone,” Tolandoro called through the hole before striding back to his vehicle.